1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to tumor associated antigens. In particular, the present invention generally relates to dominant B cell epitopes of tumor associated antigens and methods of making and using thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the last 10 years, molecular identification of tumor associated antigens (TAA) has clearly demonstrated that the human immune system can react with endogenously arising cancer cells. See Van der Bruggen, P, et al. (1991) Science 254(5038):1643-1647. Both the cellular and humoral arms of the human immune system recognize autologous TAA derived from cancer cells. See Rosenberg, S A (2001) Nature 411(6835):380-384; and Old, L J, and Chen, Y T (1998) J Exp Med 187(8):1163-1167. Of particular interest to the serological analysis of human cancers is the identification of TAA recognized by antibodies (Ab) present in the sera of cancer subjects. See Sahin, U, et al. (1997) Curr Opin Immunol 9(5):709-716. SEREX, or the serological analysis of recombinant cDNA expression libraries of human cancers, has been the primary approach to identify TAA based on their recognition by Ab.
Up to now, there are many TAA identified based on recognition by Ab present in subjects' sera. See Scanlan, M J, et al. (2002) Immunol Rev 188(1):22-32. These TAA include targets from many cancer types, such as melanoma, renal cancer, Hodgkin's disease, esophageal cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, gastric cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and so on. The discovery of these TAA provides molecular details of the humoral immune response to autologous tumors. More importantly, the discovery of these molecules awakens the old hope of finding serological markers for cancer detection, diagnosis, and prognosis. However, most of the SEREX-defined antigens do not or only react with few allogeneic sera.
Unfortunately, investigating Ab responses against a large panel of TAA that covers a wide spectrum of subjects with a particular cancer requires the purification of individual TAA protein, which is expensive and difficult to achieve. Therefore, a need exists for epitopes from TAA for the detection of Ab against TAA.